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OUT OF TUNE WITH TELLY

BY OLLIE WILSON

IT'S ALWAYS been tough for stand-up comedians to make it in television - but musical comics say the odds against them hitting the big time have become phenomenal.

A glance through a typical week's British TV run-down reveals that problem instantly.

There is schedule room for camp comedy (Channel 4's So Graham Norton), topical comedy (BBC1's Have I Got News For You), mimicry (Alistair MacGowan's' Big Impression, also on BBC1), physical comedy (The BBC's Lee Evans - So What Now?) and prankster comedy (Channel 4's Trigger Happy TV).

Yet not a single slot exists on terrestrial television for musical comedy.

What have the guitar-brandishing funnymen and women done to deserve this exclusion?

Brian Damage - one-time Jongleurs talent contest winner and a seasoned professional on stand-up comedy and music circuits - says: "TV has no idea what to do with musical comedians, even after all this time.

"All producers can think of is having one musical number, as in Channel 4's 11 O'Clock Show.

"Even in the comedy clubs it is difficult. Most promoters don't want more than one musical act on the same bill."

Indeed, musical comedians often leave their guitars or other musical instruments at home - or use them for just one short gag.

Many musical comedians now says their genre frightens television producers because it is as classed as untrendy "variety".

Yet both Jasper Carrott and Billy Connolly found success with TV shows that successfully merged comedy and music. And the once-bustling folk circuit used to serve as a springboard into TV comedy for acts like Carrot, Connolly and Richard Digance.

Another folk veteran Peter Buckley Hill, a semi-professional performer who never got a television break, says: "Jasper Carrott would do as many straight songs as comic ones, and I recall Billy Connolly would just do straight songs. All the comedy came in the talk in between."

Hill has recorded four albums of comic songs, including one cut this year called Buckets Within Buckets - and performed more one-hour shows of musical comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe than he cares to remember.

But he has always ended up promoting himself - and has not caught the eye of TV talent scouts.

Hill believes the way television is organised holds back musical comedians.

"TV companies often have different departments for comedy and music," he says. "It is organisationally difficult for them to use musical comedians doing comic songs."

Perhaps part of the problem is that many stand-ups are themselves a little suspicious of their musical comedy colleagues.

Supergirly - the Australian duo who sing crudely-satiric lyrics to karaoke tapes of pop tunes - have been a hit with fans - but pilloried by comedy purists.

The London listings magazine Time Out was uncharacteristically scathing about their comedy skills and in the chat room of the Chortle web site one comedian put them forward as the worst comedians ever.

And performers trying to do musical impressions on the stand-up circuit also tend to encounter opposition from pure stand-ups.

One young musical comic who appears to be making headway in the broadcasting world is Mitch Benn who performs on Radio 4's The Now Show and Radio 2's It's Been A Bad World.

Benn - a larger than life guitarist - admits the going has been "quite hard" with producers tending to place him in a comic song slot. The direction Benn would like to take it is sending up videos of hit pop songs.

But he says this has become more expensive to do than it was in the 1980s because of the higher production values of the original videos. "I put the idea around but no one in TV would pay for me to do it," he admits.

But he says: "I have utmost faith in musical comedy as a performance medium. Audiences find it very funny and that's what matters."

That may be so.

But, perhaps, the reason it is so phenomenally difficult for musical comedy to make it onto TV is that virtually nothing musical comedians do sounds vaguely original.

If they write new comic songs, they are accused of being old-fashioned or raves from the grave of vaudeville.

But if they try to be bang up to date by ridiculing pop culture, what they are doing is in itself derivative.

It may be a mission impossible but musical comedians need to find a third way, where they don't sound like they have been dusted down from a folk club or comedy karaoke contest.

© 2001 Ollie Wilson